What are the prospects for Panax notoginseng cultivation in 2018?
Panax notoginseng is an important Chinese medicinal herb with huge market demand, and ten years ago was considered the hottest period for Panax notoginseng demand. At that time the planted area was small and demand was large, so is Panax notoginseng still worth planting today? Qinnong Network will briefly analyze this for everyone based on some recent data below.
1. Is growing Panax notoginseng profitable
At present the Panax notoginseng market is long past its former boom, and the price has dropped from the initial five or six hundred per jin to around two or three hundred now; in 2016 the price fell all the way to rock bottom, only a few dozen per jin. Currently the Panax notoginseng market is still relatively stable, basically holding at a starting price of 200 yuan, and recently Panax notoginseng has been heavily purchased by pharmaceutical factories, causing the price to trend upward. So growing Panax notoginseng in 2018 still falls in the relatively profitable category.
2. Returns from growing Panax notoginseng
Generally one mu of three-year dried Panax notoginseng yields about 300 jin, the market purchase price is around 160 yuan, so the profit per mu is around 48,000 yuan, while the costs that need to be invested for seeds, fertilizer, management and field harvesting are generally around 20,000 yuan. In between there will also be losses reduced by weather, insect pests and other conditions, so the net profit is generally around 25,000 yuan per mu, averaging around 8,000 yuan per mu per year. The usual planting scale is around 10 mu, which two people can manage, meaning income over three years is more than 250,000 yuan.
3. Current market situation
Panax notoginseng first boomed because misinformation caused the market price to soar, and when people discovered this was different from what they had imagined, and market supply was also large, the price immediately came down. Later, as the pharmaceutical industry processed Panax notoginseng and its own medicinal and tonic effects proved genuinely decent, the price rose a second time, but this recovery was ultimately not as booming as before, only less than half of the previous level. But at least a balance of supply and demand is guaranteed; the current market situation is dominated by large-volume consumption by the pharmaceutical industry, supplemented by small-batch consumption of high-quality Panax notoginseng by residents.
4. Current cultivation situation
The main producing area of Panax notoginseng is China's Yunnan region; according to incomplete statistics, Yunnan's Panax notoginseng output accounts for more than 80% of the whole country. The planted area has more than quadrupled compared with ten years ago. At present China's Panax notoginseng planted area is around 600,000 mu, with annual output of around 50,000 tons. The fastest growth in planted area has come in recent years, at around 100,000 mu of annual growth.
The biggest profits in Panax notoginseng are currently still in the high-quality market; there are still profits in the low-quality market, but they are relatively low and the risk is greater. It is recommended that everyone definitely develop toward high quality when planting. At present its overall trend still offers fairly good cultivation prospects.